The living and the dead will soon be side by side on the outskirts of Antakya, where new government housing under construction to house the survivors of last year’s deadly earthquakes overlooks graveyards for those who perished.
“No one can bring back what was lost, as we lost everything,” said İsa Akbaba, who lost seven members of his extended family including his elder sister, Sıdıka, and his younger brother, Musa, during a visit to the cemetary.
Tuesday 6 February will mark a year since twin deadly earthquakes destroyed their homes in Turkey’s southernmost province, wrenching apart buildings as much of Antakya was destroyed. İsa’s mother, Suat Akbaba, was trapped under layers of debris for hours before she was eventually rescued.
Sıdıka and Musa were not so lucky. They are two among the 50,783 people estimated to have died in southern Turkey.
One month after the earthquake, Suat, her son, İsa, and their extended family live in tents outside their destroyed apartment block.
Six months on (left), the family prepares a meal in the outdoor kitchen they built after being displaced and (right) Suat’s niece fetches water to prepare the food for dinner.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan travelled to the earthquake zone soon after the initial destruction, his sleek presidential sedan weaving among wreckage that many blamed on corruption within Turkey’s two-decade construction boom, a hallmark of his rule.
Erdoğan was quick to promise his citizens solutions to the damage, which spanned an area larger than the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined and cost the country almost 10% of its GDP, according to a parliamentary inquiry.
“Our citizens should not worry. We will never allow for them to remain unsheltered,” he told the public during his visit to the quake zone, even as many, like the Akbabas, set up camp outside.
Erdoğan also promised reconstruction at breakneck speed, even as results appeared remote when towering piles of rubble covered swaths of the country.
“We will rebuild these buildings within one year and will hand them back to citizens,” he said, just four days after the earthquakes struck.
For months after the quakes, the grinding of machinery echoed across much of Turkey’s south-east, as workers tore down thousands of former homes and offices across the earthquake zone. Many, like the Akbabas, lived among the rubble. In other places, near the epicentre of the quakes – often those more closely associated with support for Erdoğan – government workers broke ground on new buildings a month after the earthquakes struck.
Because the Akbabas rented their former apartment, they will not be eligible for any of the 319,000 new homes that the president promised will be handed over to citizens.
Like many across Antakya, they are surveilling the empty lots that used to be their neighbourhood and waiting for private reconstruction, doubtful that they will be able to find somewhere they can afford to live amid a nationwide housing crisis and rising inflation.
One year after the earthquake, Suat and Isa mourn the death their family members Sıdıka and Musa in front of a cluster of concrete skeletons – new government housing for others who survived the earthquakes.
The Akbabas have also grown used to mourning. Well into the summer months after the earthquake, they gathered next to the remains of their destroyed apartment block, grateful to be together as a family even as they lived among mounds of rubble and cement dust in a makeshift camp.
Local officials abruptly expelled them from the site in November, dispersing the family into container camps scattered around Antakya’s outskirts. The site of their former building is now a pit filled with construction equipment, ready to build a new apartment building that others could live in.
The Akbabas miss their former apartment, part of the daily suffering wrought by the earthquakes. “Our pain is still fresh,” said İsa.
Kenan Kadı, his wife, Gamze, and their three children lived in their car in Antakya immediately after the earthquake. Kenan and Gamze would stay up all night so their children – Mehmet, Ela and one-year-old Cemre – could sleep in the car.
Kenan, Gamze and their three children in the car where they slept after the earthquake had made their home uninhabitable in February 2023.
(Left) the family shares a meal provided by aid workers with other families days after the earthquake. (Right) six months after the earthquake, Kenan takes a break at his family’s company in Antakya.
Six months on, the family moved to their summer home in Arsuz on the coast where they also accommodated some friends who were displaced from the earthquake. Kenan and his brother Sedat run a business making marble gravestones and countertops at the edge of Antakya. Kenan works during the week and then drives to the coast at weekends to spend time with his family.
Kenan and his family at their summer home in Arsuz in August 2023.
The vision for Antakya’s renewal, a masterplan designed by a consortium of international architectural firms spearheaded by Britain’s Foster + Partners, offers something markedly different from the city’s past.
Sedat Kadı was skeptical about the rebuilding efforts, and neither he nor his brother said they had any interest in buying one of the new apartments despite the offer of government loans.
“The aim of this reconstruction project is to push poor people out of town,” he said. “If the point is to rebuild the centre for the rich and to leave the poor aside, it would be better not to do it at all.”
For Kenan and his brother Sedat, the business of making gravestones and new construction meant the earthquake has created a morbid business opportunity, although they say they are primarily focused on being grateful to be alive.
A few months after the earthquakes decimated Antakya, they noticed a sudden overwhelming demand for gravestones. The family business went from manufacturing a couple a week to an estimated four each day, and the deluge of orders continues even as the anniversary approached.
“The earthquake became a reason to work,” he said ruefully. “We don’t know what to pray for: the souls of the dead, more business, or just to be thankful that we’re alive.”
Kenan and his cousin Hasan Emre select a piece of marble for a customer in January 2024.
Although the Kadıs work in construction, they were unconvinced by the new construction on the edge of Antakya, a pilot project offering ringed by posters of gleaming new apartment buildings with offers of government-subsided loans.
The Koyunlu family lived in the small village of Tevekkeli outside the city of Kahramanmaraş. Their home completely collapsed, but Ismael, his wife, Nazire, and their daughter Berivan were able to escape in time.
One month after the earthquake, dead farm animals belonging to a neighbour of the Koyunlu family remain under the rubble.
One month after the earthquake, (left) Nazire and Ismail prepare gas canisters for cooking outside their collapsed home in Tevekkeli and (right) the family share tea in a shed next to their house.
A month after the earthquake, the family were living in a shed next to their former home after retrieving all the belongings that they could from the rubble.
Nazire at the entrance to her home in the village of Tevekkeli in February 2023.
Six months later the family were still living in the shed. They built a deck outside for sleeping, as temperatures can reach over 40C. An excavator removed the rubble of their home, leaving an empty plot.
Erdoğan promised his citizens 319,000 new homes would be delivered by February, with the same amount constructed and supplied the following year.
A spokesperson for the Turkish presidency said in late January that “the construction of a total of 307,000 houses has started. The delivery of a total of 46,000 houses … has started gradually.”
Nazire prepares the beds outside before the sun sets on 19 August 2023.
Yusuf Sr, his wife, Fatma, and their children were at home in the city of Kahramanmaraş when the earthquake struck. The entrance to the house became blocked by falling debris but they were able to escape. They didn’t receive any aid for weeks, and so bought their own tarpaulin, which they used to build a shelter outside their home. At one point, 17 members of Fatma’s extended family were living in the shelter.
One month after the earthquake, the family sit at the shelter that they built outside their destroyed home.
Six months later the government provided the family with a container, but it was too small for all of them to inhabit. It would have also been impossible for Yusuf Sr to run his scrap business from the container city. When asking Yusuf Sr if things have improved, he replied: “The last time you came here we had hope: nowadays we don’t even have that.”
(Left) Fatma is consoled by her son Yusuf outside their shelter on 1 March 2023 and (right) six months on, Fatma tends to her blind son Berat, who is cracking walnuts in his uncle’s home in Kahramanmaraş.
Their youngest son, Berat, 11, is blind. His family cannot afford the medication that he needs. Three years ago, his mother, Fatma, was diagnosed with leukaemia, which has recently progressed to stage four. She had been undergoing state-provided chemotherapy for more than two years. After the treatment she was given her two medicines, which she was told would be free for earthquake victims. However, they turned out to cost over €1,000, which the family also couldn’t afford.
The family spends time on the patio of the home they are renting from a relative on 27 January 2024.
January 2024 (Left) Fatma in her family’s rented house last week. She was diagnosed with leukaemia three years ago. (Right) Yusuf Jr at the container where he sleeps alone.
Engin, his wife, Zeriban, and their newborn daughter Ismihan were at home in Adıyaman when the earthquake hit. After their apartment received substantial structural damage, Engin and his family left the city for the village of Aydınoluk, where he grew up. They shared a communal tent there with 20 family members.
Women prepare food in the village of Aydınoluk, where Engin and his family moved immediately after the earthquake.
One month after the earthquake, (left) Engin stands outside his damaged home; his sister, brother-in-law and their three children were all killed in the disaster. (Right) Engin, Zeriban and Ismihan in August 2023 outside the container given to them by the government in Adıyaman.
They were eventually given a container back in Adıyaman by the government. After six months there, the family moved back into their home after taking out a loan to rebuild it.
Engin spends time with his daughter Ismihan on the patio of their rebuilt home in January 2024.
Across Antakya, posters showing restoration line streets where former ancient mosques, bathhouses and covered markets stood. Some show images of reconstruction that are different in character to what previously stood in the city, a centre of multiculturalism for thousands of years.
For many of Antakya’s residents, the reconstruction is unable to bring back the communities who once made their city unique, many of whom are now dispersed throughout the country or buried in the graveyards that dot its outskirts.At the entrance to Antakya, surrounded by areas now cleared of rubble, the clock tower remains stuck on the time the earthquakes struck: Just after 4am on 6 February, when everything changed for the city, and for the entire country.
All photographs by David Lombeida; words by Ruth Michaelson and David Lombeida with assistance from Ayça Aldatmaz; picture editing and design by Jim Powell
